Alabama advances to the Final Four for top basketball recruit

The Alabama Crimson Tide earned a commanding 94-79 victory over the North Carolina Tar Heels on Wednesday night, but Alabama isn’t settling for Wednesday’s victory. The Crimson Tide also received positive news on the recruiting trail: Joe Tipton of On3 Sports reported that Alabama is one of four schools in the final mix for AJ Dybantsa, the top overall recruit in the 2025 class.

Alabama is in the mix with a trio of blue-blooded college basketball players: the Kansas Jayhawks, the BYU Cougars and the Alabama team that’s just floundered on the court, the North Carolina Tar Heels.

The 6-foot-2, 220-pound forward from Utah Prep in Hurricane, Utah, was watching Alabama’s game against the Oregon Ducks in the Player’s Era Festival Championship Saturday night while his father was there for the Crimson Tide’s win over UNC.

247 Sports Director of Recruiting Adam Finkelstein rates Dybantsa as a first-rounder and potential lottery pick in the NBA Draft.

“AJ Dybantsa is a 6-foot-9 jumbo winger with a 7-foot-plus wingspan, a burgeoning 200-plus-pound frame and an advanced understanding of how to score from his spots (even in a half-court game). High school basketball prospects.

Dybantsa has a deadly pull-up game with high release and consistent ball rotation. He was a celebrated prospect even before he entered high school. Still, he has avoided the pitfalls of early stardom by continually improving his game at every level. As an underclassman, he was the leading scorer at the 2023 Peach Jam and shows untapped potential on defense thanks to his size and movement skills.

The bottom line is: Dybantsa controls his own future. “If he continues on his current path, there is no one in high school basketball with more potential than him,” Finkelstein wrote in his evaluation of Dybantsa.

Dybantsa took an official visit to Alabama in September 2024 when the Crimson Tide football team defeated the Georgia Bulldogs at home.